The chair rolled. Antoine saw the floor rise toward him, then his face met concrete. Blood flowed back into his arms, but it only brought more pain.
“You didn’t say anything to the police because your kind is naturally afraid of those people. But later you wanted to feel important, so you started shootin’ your mouth off.”
“I left without tellin’ Dwayne everythin’.”
“You didn’t tell me what the person look like.”
He took in a choking, wet breath. “I didn’t see what the person looked like, me.”
“You know what this is, boy?”
Antoine squinted up. His left eye saw nothing. With his right eye he made out a wire. He nodded and said, “Wire.”
Sudden pealing laughter made him lose control of his bowels again.
“Whooeee, would you smell that?” the funny one said. “Υou’ll thank me later for giving you a good clean-out. This is wire. You’re right about that. But what else? No, you don’t gotta figure it out. It’s a live wire”—more laughter—“get it, a live wire. Fuck, I don’t want to think about what you’d smell like if you burned right now.”
“Let me go,” Antoine said, coughing between each word. “Just let me go and no one ever knows about this. No one. And no one knows about what I see in the courtyard.”
“So what did you see?” the man shouted. He ground a foot into Antoine’s arms, ground them against the back of the metal chair. “And who else did you tell? You went up to the house in the middle of this morning, didn’t you?’
He murmured yes, and felt his mind slip away. He wanted silence and dark. He tried to pray to himself, to tell himself he was a child of God and full of joy. They couldn’t find the part of him that was God’s. They couldn’t kick that and make it bleed.
“That was because you wanted to tell someone about your secret, right, Antoine? You wanted to be important, right?”
“I never be important, me. Not important. Just an honest man.”
“Honest. Will you listen to that? The man is honest, so we got nothin’ to worry about. You went up to the house to tell your story, but someone else was there. So you waited until later and then you finish, huh? This time you tell what you saw. The description and everythin’.”
He couldn’t clear his thoughts. “Nice dresser,” he said. “Black leather bag. Cost plenty.”
“Oh, plenty. What else?”
“Nothin’. Red hair, maybe. Him wear a hat, but the light shine on his hair. But I do not know him, me. No, I do not know him.”
“Oh, yeah. I think we got our answer, boss. Okay, boy. One last thing before we let you go. You told someone else what you saw and we want you to let us know who that was.”
How would Rose and the boys manage without him? Mr. Petrie had paid him well. Miss Celina would keep on paying him well—or Mr. Charbonnet. They’d want the place kept up.
“Who?” He heard the voice, but it was distant.
“He’s passing out on us.”
“We gotta have a name. I gotta have somethin’ to prove we done our job—and we got a problem to fix. I gotta be able to tell Win I used my initiative, and I got good instincts.”
“Because it’s goin’ to help you prove somethin’, boss? You afraid you ain’t so popular with him no more?”
“When you get to ask me questions, I’ll let you know. Stick to what I pay you to do. Get him to give us a name and not Charbonnet, please God. I can’t use Charbonnet or Win will think I’m making the whole goddamn thing up.”
The voices wafted over Antoine. He liked the cold concrete beneath his cheek. He’d like to melt into the floor and be gone.
“Okay, you’re watchin, boss, right.” A mouth came close to his ear. “All you got to do is nod, Antoine. Did you tell Celina Payne what you saw?”
He began to sink. The concrete opened to take him.
Antoine nodded.
Fifteen
“The job must pay well,” Jack said, sizing up Garth Fletcher’s plush office suite at St. Peter’s Hospital for Children. He was making conversation, but Celina didn’t show any sign of having heard him.
“If he’s tryin’ to make a point, he’s made it.” They’d been in the green and gray waiting room almost an hour. “We’re convinced he’s important and busy. He can show up now.”
Not a word from Celina.
“I’ve never had a professional reason to see him before. Does he make a habit of running behind schedule? Way behind schedule?”
It was a start. She’d refused to let him pick her up in Royal Street. No explanation, just “No, thanks, I’ll meet you there,” and a hang-up while his mouth was still open. He’d phoned St. Peter’s first thing that morning and made an appointment with Garth. After last night’s disaster he had needed an excuse to call Celina. He had a feeling that if her brother hadn’t been the one to answer the phone and say she was there, she would have screened his call out.
Perhaps she’d told her brother about his “arrogance,” and Cyrus had been pragmatic enough to think marriage to Jack would be a good opportunity for his sister, or at least one she should consider. “How long is Cyrus staying with you?”
“Indefinitely.” She was adept at conversation stoppers.
“About last night, Celina. I—”
“Don’t.”
“It’s a perfect solution for you. You and the baby would never want for anything. And you won’t have to think about whether or not you want to name Errol. And—”
“Don’t. I’m not here to discuss anything personal with you.”
“Marriage. Yours and mine. It would be a useful arrangement for both of us. And you wouldn’t have to worry about your child having a father. If I say it’s mine, nobody’s going to say otherwise—not where they’re likely to be heard.” Oh, yes, Jack Charbonnet was known for his suave approach. Too bad the magic had deserted him today.
He sank lower in his soft green leather chair. Celina sat in a similar chair, as far from him as possible. He said, “I’m glad these are comfortable,” then indicated the receptionist’s vacant rosewood desk. “Do you suppose wherever they are, they’re together?”
Taking her briefcase with her, Celina got up and walked, stiff-backed, to the open door into Garth’s acres of office. From where Jack sat the decor in the other room looked like a recreation of an oversized study in an English manor house. Studded brown leather abounded.
“Red suits you, Celina.” The understated lines of her linen suit drew attention to the woman, not the clothes. She was vivid, and if you knew what to look for… “You are startin’ to show no matter what you wear.”
She stared at him and he decided he’d earned the contempt he saw in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have to hide it,” he told her quietly. “But I don’t have the right to be so personal. I apologize.”
Celina nodded, and faced Garth’s office again.
“You are lovely,” he said, surprising himself. “I think you only get lovelier. Pregnancy does that. At least, I believe it does.”
“Thank you.”
He ran the back of a thumbnail over his bottom lip and kept on studying her. “I’m not going to forget kissing you.”
“It wasn’t important.”
Jack almost laughed. He deserved the put-down. “1 hope we can find a common ground. Perhaps I should say I’d like to find a common ground.”
Heavy steps sounded outside. “There you are!” Garth Fletcher bounded into the waiting room with his large head thrust forward on broad shoulders, and exuding energy. The atmosphere changed. It almost crackled.
“Were you lookin’ for us, Garth?” Jack asked mildly. “I thought I clearly heard your receptionist tell me the meetin’ was here.”
“Just a figure of speech,” their host said with a honking laugh. His mane of gray hair rippled back from his wide forehead like a retreating tide. “You’re lookin’ mighty fine, as usual, Celina. Come on into my parlor, both of you.” He put a hand on the back of Celina’s neck and guided her ahead of h
im.
Jack followed and closed the door. “Busy day?” he said, beginning to simmer at the other man’s condescension.
“They’re all busy.”
But the bastard wasn’t going to apologize for wasting an hour of another busy man’s time. “I was starting to think you were tryin’ to avoid us, Garth. I called yesterday, and the day before, and was told you didn’t have an open appointment. I’m glad we finally got to the head of the line.” There had been little doubt that Garth would have preferred to put them off indefinitely.
“You always make this room look clumsy, Celina,” Garth said, not looking at Jack, or acknowledging he’d heard what he said. “Such a lovely, feminine little bit of a thing.”
More than lovely in Jack’s opinion, even if she was more peaked than he would have preferred. Wasn’t there something they said about redheads not wearing red? Her hair was a red-brown with flashes of coppery color among the short curls. Celina should wear lots of red because it was terrific on her. She needed him. What would it take to make her see that? Did she have something to hide from him, something that made her want to keep her distance from him?
She sat down and put her briefcase on the floor. She smiled at Garth, but it looked as if the effort cost her something. She didn’t thank him for the paternalistic compliment. He patted her shoulder and his hand lingered.
Jack resented that Garth thought he had a right to touch Celina with that familiar, jovial informality. It gave the man—or so he thought—a way to disguise a gesture with sexual undertones. “We did have the time right today, didn’t we?” Jack asked. “Two?”
“You did. Now, what can I do for you? Oh, I’m sure you don’t want anythin’ to drink so soon after lunch, do you?”
This time Celina’s blue eyes sought out Jack’s. She said, “No, I’m sure we don’t. How is Derek Columbier?”
“Doin’ well, quite well.”
“He’s not rejecting the implant?”
Garth’s jovial facade fell away. He sniffed and rocked onto his heels. “Not yet. His mother is euphoric, o’course. It’s never easy to strike the balance between supportin’ hope and avoidin’ false hope.”
“Garth,” Jack said. “Celina and I have sοmethin’ we want to ask you. Α favor. We know we could have sent a note, or called, and you’d have done it, but we wanted to come and see you face-to-face. These are difficult times. I’m sure you understand.”
“Times are inevitably difficult.” Garth walked around his oak desk and sat down. “I’m faced with a special meeting of the board of trustees this evenin’. That’s enough to make a man quake in his shoes, I can tell you. You can’t imagine what a group that is.”
“Oh, I think I can, I—”
“Not that they aren’t all well meanin’, of course. They give their all to this hospital. But they do expect a great deal from me and the entire staff of St. Peter’s. They scrutinize everythin’, I can tell you, and if sοmethin’ looks like it might cast a shadow on this fine institution, well then, they expect me to fix it.”
“Very demanding,” Jack said. He sat down. “But you do a fine job of it. That’s why this hospital is held up as an example across the country.”
“We’ve come to talk to you about Errol,” Celina said. She took a file from her briefcase. “I’m hoping there will be time to talk about progress, time schedule, and so on for a few projects, but Errol is the first order of business for us.”
Garth pushed his chair back, propped his heels on the desk, and tented his fingers. “Errol is dead.”
An uncomfortable silence followed before Jack’s temper finally overloaded. “No shit! I’m glad we came to see you today, Garth, or we might have missed that important piece of information. How about you, Celina? Aren’t you relieved to know the truth about Errol? And did you notice the fine balance Garth struck. He knew this was not the time to give false hope, so he went straight for complete disclosure. Now we can stop hoping Errol will open that drawer at the morgue and walk into our open arms. He’s still there because the police won’t release his body yet.”
“There’s no call for that,” Garth said.
“Don’t,” Celina said, her voice barely audible. “Please, don’t argue at a time like this.”
“You’re upsettin the little lady,” Garth said, leaning forward, adjusting his tie. “The shock has been too much for you, Jack. You’re overwrought.”
“Overwrought? Overwrought? What are you…Work on your vocabulary, Garth, you’re not talkin’ to a girl about to swoon.” He stood up and paced. “You deal with this, Celina. I don’t trust myself right now.”
“We’re all shocked,” Celina said. “We need your help, Garth. If we’re going to save Dreams, we need your confidence.”
He was quiet for a while and tapped his touching forefingers against his lips. “Errol was the heart and soul of the foundation,” he said at last. “When something like this happens, it’s often best to step back and give it time. Now, I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t think it’s a great idea. It is. And you and Errol brought a lot of joy to a bundle of children, but there’s a time for grievin’. An appropriate time. And that’s now for you and Dreams.”
“Why would you refer to Dreams as a good idea?” Celina said, and Jack glanced at her sharply. The anger he heard in her voice was new, different. “You didn’t call it a good idea when we were able to raise the money for a patient library you wanted but the trustees didn’t think was necessary. Then we were angels. Your term, not ours. Ideas are notions that haven’t yet taken shape.”
“Semantics, Celina, semantics.”
“Don’t talk down to her,” Jack said. “I don’t like it.”
“Is that a fact?” Garth tapped his fingertips together and regarded Jack with knowing eyes. “Steppin’ right into Errol’s shoes, are we?”
The implication was impossible to miss. “What do you mean by that?” Let the man put it into words.
“Obvious, isn’t it,” Garth said smoothly. “You’re steppin’ right up to make sure the things Errol cared for continue. I like that.”
“You just said you thought this was a time for grieving,” Celina said. “For us, and for Dreams. That sounded as if you meant you didn’t think we should be continuing with our work.”
Garth smiled at her and his glance took her in from head to toe. “I meant it might be a good idea not to draw too much attention to the foundation right now.”
“Why would that be?” Jack asked.
“All I’m tryin’ to do,” Garth said, looking aggrieved, “is what’s best for everyone. Now, if you want to work here with the children, Celina, I know I can find somethin’ for you. I’m about to institute a fund-raiser for an additional rehab wing and there’s nothin’ that would please me more than to have you on board.”
“I bet,” Jack said, not so much to himself that Garth Fletcher wouldn’t hear. “Did you know that Errol and I were partners in Dreams? His idea. His sweat and tears. But I have a financial stake and Errol and I had an understanding that I’d step in and take an active role if it was ever necessary.” He and Errol had never discussed what would happen if Errol couldn’t act, but Garth didn’t have to know that detail.
“Is that so?”
“It is. But we’re here for another reason. We know you’re going to want to help us out.”
An impassive mask spread over Garth’s wide face, but his eyes remained alert and wary.
“We want you to do something for Errol,” Celina said, sitting forward in her chair. “He loved this hospital. You weren’t the administrator when it happened, but his son was kept alive here. And then he died here. Errol never stopped feeling he owed this place a great deal.”
Garth studied his fingernails. “Took him a while to remember though. So I understand. I suppose you can forgive a man for turnin’ to liquor—and other things—at a time like that.”
They ought to leave—now.
Celina sprang to her feet. “That wasn’t whe
n Errol had his difficulties.”
“But he did have them,” Garth said, sizing her up yet again. “Yes, he did” Celina agreed. “And that’s why we’re here. There are people who are capitalizing on history. Rather than mourn the death of a good man, they’re having a great time dragging up things he had the courage to overcome a long time ago.”
“From what I’ve heard,” Garth said, “he was found in, shall we say, unfortunate circumstances.”
“He was found dead,” Jack said, barely restraining himself from pulling Garth across his desk.
He sounded as if he knew what only Celina and Jack were supposed to know about Errol’s death—unless Garth had the same sources as Charmain Bienville. Then there was the question of what had been on Antoine’s mind the last time Jack was in Royal Street. He had intended to speak with him, but there hadn’t been an appropriate time.
Celina said, “Errol was murdered. And now we’re in a bind because some people are getting in the way of us continuing his work because they enjoy pulling out things that are long past. History. Instead of mourning for a truly good and honorable man, they want to find a way to blame him for what was done to him. You and I know that for some years Errol’s life revolved around helping children. Primarily children in this hospital. What we’re asking you to do is issue a statement of support for Errol. A statement about your gratitude for all he did. We’d be very thankful if you’d tell anyone who wants to listen, and plenty do, that you had great admiration for Errol, that he was beyond reproach, and that any effort to tarnish his memory is a miscarriage of justice.”
Garth actually looked amused. “You were very close to him, weren’t you?” he asked.
“Very. I loved and admired him.”
Wrong word, darlin’. “So did I,” Jack said, seeking to defang any negative comeback of Garth’s. “You could find hundreds in this town who feel very close to Errol.”
“Really? I didn’t know him that well myself.”
“You”—Celina gripped the arms of her chair—“you did know Errol well. You came to him often, Garth, very often. No week went by when you didn’t call. And the two of us spent hours in this office with you.”
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